PBworks Announces Real-Time and Voice Collaboration

Integrated instant messaging, live notifications, live editing, and voice fill
out collaboration suite

SAN MATEO, Calif., Nov. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- PBworks, the leading provider of
hosted collaboration solutions for business and education, today announced its
upcoming Real-Time Collaboration Update, including true Voice Collaboration.
Geographically-distributed teams will be able to work together on writing
content, creating meeting notes in real-time, working together during
impromptu conference calls, and enjoying other interactive features which
previously required a face-to-face meeting.

"While PBworks has been an ideal tool for asynchronous collaboration,
organizations such as law firms and consultancies have told us that they would
rather not go through the hassle of setting up a separate web and telephone
conference session to work together in real-time," said PBworks CEO Jim Groff.
"With this update, PBworks gives customers a single suite that covers both
asynchronous and real-time collaboration. This release will allow our users to
know which of their colleagues are available, message them in real time, and
broadcast a live editing session. And shortly, Voice Collaboration will allow
them to trigger and manage impromptu conference calls using their current
phone service."

Alternative real-time collaboration tools (i.e., web conferencing), are
generally standalone products for "appointment" collaboration. The typical use
case for these tools is when a user needs to schedule a meeting to review
materials in another application such as PowerPoint. In this instance, a user
arranges the meeting, sends out links and dial-in information to all
interested parties, usually via email, waits for acceptances, and finally,
waits for all parties to arrive.

In contrast, PBworks is making real-time collaboration a natural extension of
its existing tools. When a user needs to connect with one or more colleagues
to gather their feedback, he or she simply calls them to the relevant wiki
page using the built-in instant messaging, and available users can see edits
being made in real-time and chat about them. When a telephone conversation is
necessary, available users can be added to an ad-hoc conference call with a
single click that initiates an outbound call to the user's regular telephone.

"With PBworks' latest release, the convergence of collaboration of many types
becomes even tighter and 'in the flow' than ever before," said Dan Keldsen,
Co-founder and Principal at Information Architected, Inc. "For those times
when classic wiki check-in/out is not enough, now there is real-time wiki
collaboration (Live Editing). For when a separate bridge line or concall would
be necessary to talk live with colleagues, there is now real-time voice (Voice
Collaboration) as well as integrated IM Collaboration (rather than as a
separate screen/page, as with MediaWiki and others). The silos of
collaboration are suddenly dropping away as Enterprise 2.0 providers embrace
the needs of real-time, converged interfaces."

The Real-Time Collaboration Update announcement covers four new features in
the PBworks suite:

-- IM Collaboration
-- Live Notifications
-- Live Editing

-- Voice Collaboration

IM Collaboration allows users to see who else in their organization is
actively using PBworks at that moment, and enables them to send them instant
messages from within the product. In addition, users can summon others to the
workspace page they're working on if they'd like input using the "send a link"
function built into the IM system.

Live Notifications alerts users to activity within their organization in
real-time, rather than requiring them to await an asynchronous email
notification. Users can select which notifications they want to receive, based
on their preferences (known as "starring" or "following" particular pages) and
other users, and the system will stream relevant notifications to whatever
page a user is viewing.

Live Editing will eliminate the need to use other web conferencing services
(such as WebEx, PlaceWare, GoToMeeting, etc.) to share a PBworks editing
session. Whenever a user is editing a workspace page, other users viewing that
page see the edits appear in real-time. When combined with IM Collaboration,
Live Editing makes it easy to convene an ad hoc meeting for working
synchronously.

Voice Collaboration is the fastest and easiest way to set up a conference call
with other members of the organization. Rather than setting up a conference
line in advance and asking attendees to dial in, PBworks Voice Collaboration
allows a user to initiate an instant conference call by dialing the desired
participants. He or she can add new participants at any time, and each
conference call is recorded and stored for later review. Voice Collaboration
can even be triggered using an iPhone, making it the first conference calling
application that works on that platform.

Putting it All Together
If a user is editing a page and realizes that he or she needs the input of
other team members, he or she can summon them to the appropriate page using IM
Collaboration, start a Live Editing session, and use Voice Collaboration to
initiate an instant conference call, all in a fraction of the time it would
take to set up a web conference, set up a conference call line, and
communicate the details to the intended participants.

"Our global team of social media strategists are working together, often
around the clock," explained John Bell, Managing Director of 360 Digital
Influence, Ogilvy's social media practice. "The introduction of real-time
collaboration in our PBworks platform will make it our new 'office.' It's not
just where we share files or even manage projects--it's where we work
everyday."

Pricing and Availability

IM Collaboration, Live Notifications, and Live Editing will be available to
Project and Legal Edition customers on November 17. There is no charge for
this free upgrade.

Voice Collaboration will be available in early 2010.

About PBworks

PBworks (http://pbworks.com) is the world's leading provider of hosted
collaboration solutions for businesses and education. Leading companies and
organizations like FedEx, DePaul University, and the FDA choose PBworks to
help teams work more effectively across geographic and organizational
boundaries, including teams that span employees, customers, partners, and
vendors.

Over 50,000 businesses have chosen PBworks to share knowledge, interact with
customers, manage, projects, and support other forms of teamwork. We host over
a million team workspaces, serve several million users each month, and 96% of
users would recommend PBworks to a friend. PBworks investors include Mohr
Davidow Ventures, Seraph Group, Sippl Investments, and Ron Conway.

PBworks is a trademark of PBwiki, Inc. All other trademarks and registered
trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE PBworks

Chris Yeh of PBworks, Inc., +1-650-224-6362, pr@pbworks.com